Discuss the view of education as sophisticated opium for the masses

Résumé du document

We will discuss the education under the early Third Republic, and we cannot move away from the context. In 1881 and 1882, when the Ferry's Law was promulgated, the Republic was not comfortably established in France. Monarchists and Bonarpatists were very much present in the country and the restoration was still possible. Socialists and anarchists are present and the episode of La Commune was only ten years old. These laws were a means for forging the minds and precisely to forge the citizen's mind. The Franco-Prussian war was over ten years ago, and France lost a part of its territory, which were the departments of Alsace and Lorraine. On the other hand, France built its colonial empire in Africa and in Asia. Its industry and trade broke. This economic situation was reached during the second industrial Revolution with the development of electric energy and the rising of car industry. This period was called the Belle époque.

Extraits

[...] So the lay educations were a new opium for masses. But the opium was maybe not more sophisticated. Indeed the new system were not completely new and it used of old technique. In campaigns, l'instituteur, the teacher, is a notable and sometimes he is in the municipal council. He is in the group of people possessing knowledge. But it is for that the system was identical. Like the priest, he is a reference for the population. In the hand he was a notable. [...]

[...] And in 1908, the newspaper socialism concluded bitterly which a new religion appeared: the cult of the patrie[14]. The new cult was the revenge against Germany. This new opium made to forget to the labour's class its problems. The chauvinism was the new cult. The opium was not so more sophisticated In conclusion, we can say which the Ferry's laws and more particularly the law on the secularism was a new opium for the masses. Firstly, the lay laws made a new religion: the patriotism. [...]

[...] In the lessons of history, France was defied and after the defeat children caught always to find the resistance and the victory. Geographies lessons idealized the French geography with its natural boundaries, its five great rivers, its perfect climate allowing all cultivation. In short it is opium for masses, in the sense where the school install a new ideology with a history revised. The teacher could, before his students, to criticize the church and priests. They were often ardent anticlericalists. [...]

[...] The construction of the new education system was against parents. A lot of parents not understanding always why their children gone to the school then they caught to work with them, in fields, in factories or in mines. Despite laws, some children not went to school. But generally a lot of children went to the school. But laws spoke only of primary school and after the certificat d'étude[3] only a minority of children went to lycée[4]. Grants existed for betters of children, but in practice only children of favorites families went to lycée. [...]

[...] (Copy on Internet) [8]“Black hussars of Republic”. Charles Péguy. Comparison between militaries and teachers. MEYER, Peter.V, ‘Primary Schoolteachers in Nineteenth-century France: A study of Professionalization through conflict', History of education Quarterly Spring-Summer (1985) [10]MEYER, Peter. [...]